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Choosing Creed Over Chaos
“The church is losing the culture because it’s being too dogmatic.” “All religions are equally valid.” “Dogma isn’t as important as unity and brotherly love.” The answer that Dorothy Sayers gives to all these statements is “Balderdash!” In Creed or Chaos, Sayers lays out a critique of these and other shallow, insipid, and bland “religious” sentiments that masquerade as Christian belief. In the course of this work, she presents Christianity as the bold, brave, and revolutionary answer to the world’s problems. Similarly to C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity,the seven chapters of Creed or Chaos were originally talks given to various groups. Unlike Lewis’ classic however, these lectures were not originally given together but were later compiled by Sayers because of their common theme: namely that Christian dogma is not boring, prosaic, or dull, but lively, radical, and revolutionary so that if it was really applied, the effect would be a radically different culture. The ideas expressed in this work are just as radical and relevant today with the rise of Islam as they were in 1940's
Sayers opens by calling the Christian story of the death and resurrection of Christ“the greatest drama ever staged.” For Sayers, the reason why we find it boring is first because it is so familiar that it has no impact, but secondly because we water it down. We focus on “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” and forget that he was God incarnate. To Sayers, the reason why Christianity is losing ground is that we have downplayed the dramatic and exciting divine mystery. But why did Christ come to earth? To bring good from evil, says Sayers. This is not to be an excuse for sin, she argues, but nonetheless that’s why He came. Heresies is on ground that’s a bit shaky. While she seems to be deliberately skirting issues such as predestination, a frank acknowledgment of the dispute over this point would be nice. She has the makings of a good theodicy here, but rejects the foundation for it. In the central chapter, Sayers argues for why the dogma is of central importance to Christian life and how the church has forgotten the creed. Her point is that in order to fight a creed (for her, Nazism) one must stand on a creed, otherwise one is standing on nothing. Thus, it is creed or chaos. She then goes on to describe how rank-and-file churchgoers can easily fall into the errors of the past unless they study and care about the creed. The final chapters of the work are a description of the social implications of the gospel. One in particular that Sayers highlights is that of work. Sayers argues that Christians ought to care immensely about work and especially about meaningful work. She delivers a devastating critique of industrial society where everything is produced and no thought goes into whether the product is even worth buying, only how much people will pay for it. This, to Sayers, is simply wrong—work should be about bringing glory to God and helping our fellowman. In essence, Sayers is arguing for orthodoxy. Daring, bold, radical orthodoxy against the “common nonsense” (to quote Chesterton) of the world is what Sayers wants to advocate. Thoughtful believers can agree wholeheartedly with this. The ancient truths are the radical truths. The old dogmatic narrow truths of the creed are what the postmodern world needs to avoid chaos. Philip F. Pugh is a student of philosophy at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, GA and regularly writes for his blog, Faith and Philosophy.
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